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Cognitive function can be impaired by physical insults such as radiation or chemical exposure. Measuring changes in cognitive function is thus an important way to quantify the adverse cognitive effects of such insults.
Intentional exposure to electro-magnetic radiation (including electricity) may cause cognitive impairment. For example, electro-convulsive therapy, used in psychiatric treatments, is acknowledged in the art to be beneficial to certain patients. It is, however, difficult to quantify how beneficial it is, as the cognitive impairment effects of ECT are difficult to measure. Similarly, radiation therapy (as, for example, for a cancer patient) is acknowledged to create memory loss. It is, however, difficult to measure this memory loss. Other electromagnetic exposure, such as exposure to laser light, or even excess exposure to sunlight, may impair cognition.
Similarly, accidental exposure to radiation may impair cognition. For example, it has been argued that cellular telephones, by exposing the user's brain to electromagnetic radiation, can impair cognition. The accuracy of this fear is, however, difficult to measure.
Other types of physical intervention or therapy may affect cognition. For example, vaccines, gene therapy and other kinds of biological implants (e.g., transplants, stem cell implants and fetal cell implants), exposure to toxins, molds or chemicals in the environment (including, for example, Gulf War syndrome and other exposure to pollution or weapons chemical, nuclear, conventional or biological), ingestion of vitamins, herbs, over the counter compositions or homeopathic preparations or other ingested things, may impair cognitive function, but measuring such effects until now has been prohibitively difficult.
There has thus been a need for a way to measure cognitive function more precisely, to quantify changes in cognitive function.
Published patents include the following:
Steven J. Brown discloses a method for diagnosis and treatment of psychological and emotional disorders using a microprocessor based video game, U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,310. Disclosed examples include “schizophrenia, depression, hyperactivity, phobias, panic attacks, anxiety, overeating, and other psychological disorders” such as “personality disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, hysteria, and paranoia.”
Joel S. Douglas et al. discloses an analyte testing system with test strips, U.S. Pat. No. 5,872,713. These test strips are effective to assay for certain chemical changes in a patient, but have not been used to assay cognitive dysfunction or impairment.
Patrick Lichter discloses a personal computer card for collecting biological data, U.S. Pat. No. 5,827,179. The patent claims a portable computer card used with an air pressure transducer, see id. at claim 1, or a “biological data receiver,” see id. at claim 6. The biological data receiver “can be adapted to receive biological data from a pulse oximetry sensor” or “from an ECG sensor.” This system may be effective to assay for certain physical changes in a patient such as pulmonary function, but it has not been used to assay cognitive dysfunction or impairment.
Tom Marlin discloses a system for constructing formulae for processing medical data, U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,451. The patent says that rather than providing a prepared statistical analysis package, Marlin discloses a computer interface to construct statistical and other mathematical formulae to ease the analysis of clinical data.
Stephen Raymond et al. discloses a health monitoring system that “tracks the state of health of a patient and compiles a chronological health history . . . us[ing] a multiparametric monitor which . . . automatically measures and records a plurality of physiological data from sensors in contact with the patient's body,” wherein “[t]he data collected is not specifically related to a particular medical condition” such as cognitive dysfunction. U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,882.
William Reber et al. discloses a medical communication timing system comprising an output device that generates an alert for the proper time to take a first medicine and a second medicine. U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,632 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,632.
Michael Swenson et al. discloses a virtual medical instrument for performing medical diagnostic testing, U.S. Pat. No. 5,623,925 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,776,057. The instrument “includes a universal interface having a number of electrical contacts and sets of electrical conduits associated with the different stored diagnostic test protocols. * * * The system is constructed to enable the selected diagnostic teat protocol to be performed on a patient after the corresponding set of electrical conduits are connected to the Universal interface contacts and to the patient.”
Paul Tamburini et al. discloses a diagnostic assay for Alzheimer's disease based on the proteolysis of the amyloid precursor protein, U.S. Pat. No. 5,981,208.
Not disclosed in the art—nor even suggested in it—is our non-invasive, computerized invention to accurately measure cognitive function and changes in cognitive function over time. There is a need for such an invention that is easy to administer, rapid, less expensive, and accurate enough to enable assessment of the cognitive impairment impact of a wide variety of agents or environments.